Once you know what to say, then your need to think through who to say it to. You should arm your partner recruitment sales team with content that focuses on three key roles in your targeted partners.
Before you focus on content, make sure you have a strong partner business proposition. The next step is building a message for three key audiences: the CEO, the technical lead, and the sales and marketing lead.
The first person you should focus on is the partner’s CEO.
It is important to remember that the CEO is really only interested in whether you are a strategic fit for their business. Do you help them enter new markets, win more customers, reduce their expense footprint, or drive up service revenue? At this stage you shouldn’t really be talking technology for technology’s sake. Rather you should be emphasizing the business proposition you developed under the previous best practice.
To help you be more successful, you need to arm your field reps with three recruiting deliverables.
Once you get past the CEO your job is still not finished. Move on the partner’s technical lead.
The partner’s technical lead often has veto power to a CEOs initial approval. If they tell the CEO that your product doesn’t live up to the hype or doesn’t work well with the partner’s core offering it will be very hard to move forward.
Don’t entrust selling this relationship to a technical resource that isn’t well schooled in partner recruitment. This is equally as important in the recruitment process as the CEO discussion.
They are interested in understanding two vital bits of information: how well does your solution perform and how difficult will it be to bring the partner’s technical resources up to speed around your solutions.
Your need to address each directly.
The third person you should focus your recruitment efforts around is the partner’s sales and marketing lead. Unlike the technical lead, the sales and marketing lead probably doesn’t have the power to kill a deal approved by the CEO and the technical lead.
But make no mistake, they are probably the most critical conversation you need to have.
The sales and marketing lead control the momentum around a partner adopting your solution as a focused offering. It is all about creating sales strategies that build momentum. And like all momentum discussion, the most important momentum change is getting the ball rolling. In other words, getting that first sale.
It is with the sales and marketing lead you need to nurture the relationship to make sure it blossoms into a meaningful partnership for you and the partner.
Partner recruitment is an essential channel management skill. If you have followed our advice, you now have a strong partner business proposition and a targeted set of recruitment content. In our next post we will share best practices in targeting the right partners.
The Spur Group's whitepaper on channel capacity breaks down how to use channel management to manage customer wins, channel sales, and market coverage.
The right approach to partner recruitment can make the difference between success and failure. Our 5-step solution will help you get on track.
Why having an effective channel partner recruitment strategy will help you tailor your message and close the deal in your partner recruitment.
Richard Flynn is a recognized leader in channels and go-to-market business strategy and execution. A Founding Partner and Chief Marketing Officer for The Spur Group, Richard has over 25 years of go-to-market experience in sales transformation, channel management, and customer marketing.